


Going Home

by clutzycricket



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 13:49:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5746171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clutzycricket/pseuds/clutzycricket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The girl Rhaenys Targaryen had been- a tiny ball of rage and compassion, James had put it- would not have let things sit as they would, Sirius knows this. He doesn't know this too-sharp woman with more questions than answers who refuses to explain where she's been since he was put in Azkaban. </p><p>He just wants some answers, and Harry is watching them dance around each other.</p><p>(Could be read as a sequel to Paper Faces, Steel Hearts.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Home

1.)

“You,” Rhaenys said, rising on her toes to get in his face, “are a complete _moron_ , an arrogant, impulsive showoff who is likely to get himself killed one night. Not only that, but you are probably going to be nice enough to extend that fate to whichever poor fucks you are working with!”

Sirius grinned, making to nip her finger. “I haven’t been killed yet, Chesh. Give me that much credit, at least. And my plan worked a lot better, considering the fact that there were more of them then we were expecting.”

She sighed, kissing him on the cheek. “I just want you home safe, alright?”

“Same to you,” he said, solemn. “Or did you think I wouldn’t hear that you were running people out of their homes just before the Death Eaters came to call?”

“There is a reason you call me the Cheshire Cat,” she said, smiling. “I am very, very good at not getting caught.” With that, she swayed off, wondering how long it would take before he realized she had purposely left a plum lipprint on his cheek.

2.)

“We have another member who is coming, I hope,” Dumbledore said, and Harry waited to be sent away.

“Who is it?” Tonks said, curious. “I didn’t think we were having much headway getting anyone new in, with all the snooping going on.”

“She isn’t, strictly speaking, a new recruit,” Dumbledore said, and there was something vaguely troubled in his gaze. “She was merely… unreachable since shortly after the last war.”

Sirius froze, looking as if he couldn’t believe it. “I thought she was dead.”

“So did I, for many years,” Dumbledore admitted.

“Eh, that spitting hellcat is too like her mother to die,” Moody said. “Question is, will she be able to do the work?”

“I think I can,” said a woman with too-large dark eyes and a sharp face, a slight, almost ghostly smile on her face. 

“Rhaenys,” Sirius said, and it sounded odd. “Where have you been?”

She drew herself in, the tall woman seeming to fold into something tiny. “Best not to ask.”

He walked out.

3.)

“Why is Sirius so…” Harry drifted off. Moody seemed the best person to ask about all of it. He was honest, and he didn’t seem to approve of coddling Harry.

Rhaenys Targaryen seemed to accept all of Sirius’ barbs as if they were some sort of penance, eyes downcast and Harry wondered how Sirius missed how thin she was, the way she constantly counted everyone, the slight pauses in her conversation.

Sometimes, though, she said something with an almost careless manner that made Sirius stomp off or go dead white.

“They lived together,” Moody said. “Never quite cared about the details, but from what I heard, the two were never really interested in other people. Not the love story like your parents, but inevitable. Targaryen fought with anyone and anything that smacked of bullying, including Black sometimes. He kept her from burning herself out. Good team. Lily asked her to be your godmother- knew if anything happened to her that her relatives would step in.”

“But what happened when my parents died?” Harry asked.

“That,” Moody said, frowning, “is one of the great mysteries of the last war. Rhaenys raised hell- she didn’t believe Sirius betrayed your parents, and wanted him to face trial, if nothing else. She wanted you, too. Then, about a month in, she vanished. Her father launched a massive investigation, but we never found her.”

“I don’t think she left on her own,” Harry said.

“Aye, lad, you’re probably right,” Moody said. “But she won’t speak- and there are a few reasons for that even I would agree with.”

4.)

Merlin, he just wanted to… shake her until her teeth rattled? No. 

Just get that careful mask off her face and prove she _felt_ something still? Yeah, he’d settle for that.

How, Sirius Black wondered, staring at Rhaenys, whose bright firework energy had turned to a serene river, did he ever think he had known this woman?

5.)

Rhaenys had taken him before Dumbledore could, her dark eyes sharp as a knife. “I swear, Dumbledore…” she started, voice low and something unearthly about it. 

“I suppose today is a day for truths,” the Headmaster said, looking sorrowful. “If you are sure.”

She laughed, something bitter in her voice. “Oh, I am certain of so very little. But this needs to be done.”

They were not in Grimmauld Place, or Hogwarts, but he could smell the sea and hear the waves, and it was cool. 

“Dragonstone Island,” Rhaenys said, blood drying under her nails. She had killed Bellatrix when Harry’s spells had failed, and given him a soft kiss on the forehead and told him his mother would be proud. 

(That he had been willing to fight Bellatrix like that or that he had failed at an Unforgivable, even with Sirius dead, he wasn’t sure.)

“It has been my family’s home for centuries,” she said, leading him through the grass to a walled garden. “Our sanctuary, dragons spelled into the stone, if you listen to the stories. And here we go…”

There was a rosebush growing, the flowers having centers so white they seemed to glow, darkening to a bloody red, with long thorns.

“Blood roses,” Rhaenys said, stroking the petals of one. “I just need a clipping- the one for whom this was planted would not mind.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asked, still numb, but some of her curious behavior starting to reach him.

“Blood roses are planted for the memory of those who have had their blood shed,” Rhaenys said, conjuring some shears. She pricked her fingers taking the clipping. “All you need is to feed them blood and show them who you want remembered.” She looked around. “I don’t think that he would like the garden very much, though.”

“It is very tidy,” Harry found himself agreeing. “Can I…?”

She blinked, too-large eyes surprised. “This was… a very impulsive idea. It might scar.”

Harry looked at her, and she gave a huff. “Point.” She frowned. “There is a lee between two towers- it would be perfect, and I will give it to you partway, so you aren’t drained dry.”

“I thought you…” Harry wasn’t sure what he had thought. “You didn’t leave because you wanted to.”

“I was taken,” Rhaenys agreed, lines around her mouth. “It was… both very painful and very instructive.”

Harry studied one of the odd gargoyles above his head. “People were looking, though.”

“Wizards aren’t the only power there is, and if a private individual assures one of those powers that a young witch’s disappearance would be a relief to the Ministry…” she sniffed the rose, still drinking in her blood. “We’ll switch now.”

It hurt at first, the thorns clamping in, but then he was thinking absently of Sirius as she kept talking.

“Eventually, one of the Order members heard that said power had a knife of terrible power,” she said, a careful eye on him. “So Dumbledore went to ask him to keep it out of Riddle’s hands, only to find that the knife was not a knife in the traditional sense, but a witch trapped for over a decade in fairy lands, fighting for her life until she was little more than a knife in his hands.”

Harry stared at her. “Why didn’t you just _tell_ Sirius that?”

“Because of the bait he used to lure me into his power,” Rhaenys said, a trace of rue on her face. “He would never have forgiven himself.” She knelt, opening a hole in the grass. “Here, the bloodthirsty little thing is full.”

“What was it?” 

“Sirius’ freedom,” Rhaenys said, watching as Harry lowered the plant. Her hands were barely oozing blood, he noticed, and she waved her wand over his hands to cover the wounds. “And after that… I didn’t like who I had become. Why should he?”

“He changed too,” Harry pointed out.

“Aye, and who is to say we would work with those changes?” Rhaenys asked. “Now, come on, my mother will fuss over us, and you can ask my father about everything before dealing with the Headmaster.”

And if, that night, watching from his guest room, Harry saw a wandlight going to the new blood roses, he didn’t say anything.


End file.
